


Senescence

by Fool



Category: The Reconstruction (Video Game)
Genre: Character-centric, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fool/pseuds/Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"This factor of death...the uncertainty...the finality... I can see why the Blue One was corrupted so easily."</i>
</p><p>If Tezkhra had known that those words were ever uttered about him, he would laugh bitterly at the irony now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Senescence

Tezkra stared at the ceiling.

There was not much else he could do, in his current state. Moving was agonizing, and he could not even walk without his cane. Even then, his fortitude could not take him very far. He was a prisoner in this room –

No. He was a prisoner in his own body.

 _I have no right to complain. This is the path I have chosen for myself._ But sometimes he had thoughts, momentary, treacherous, meaningless thoughts, but they whispered in his mind's ear nonetheless. _You could have been a god. You could have lived forever. It would have been better than this._ Sometimes he regretted being mortal. He always pushed the thoughts aside, but that was becoming harder and harder the longer he lived.

And he knew, now, that today would be the day. An overwhelming tiredness was washing over him – not just physical, but mental, spiritual. He didn't have the strength to hold on anymore. Some part of him screamed to resist, to hold on just a little bit longer, but he knew that was impossible. Entropy always claims its due.

Tezkhra was jolted out of his somber reverie by the sound of his door swinging open to bang against the wall – a bit more forcefully than his guest may have wanted, Tezkhra thought.

“Tez – oh gods, Tez, no...”

A face appeared in Tezkhra's vision, as old and wrinkled as his own, but grey, not white. He was trying to keep a stoic face as he always did, but he could not contain his emotions now, just as he could not at every other death. His whole body trembled underneath his plain white robe – _He's still wearing that? Old habits die hard, I suppose_ – and his face contorted with agony.

Tezkhra just smiled, sadly.

“Dehl...you came.”

It was a silly thing to say. He knew Dehl would, as he always did. He hadn't missed a single one of their deaths, so why Tezkhra's?

“Of course. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.” He left the last part unspoken. _Not that I will live much longer anyway_.

“I know... Thank you...”

Dehl grabbed his hand suddenly, and clung to it like his life depended on it.

“How? Why? Why did you choose this? You could have...you could have...” He stuttered and groped for words, too overcome with pain and despair to speak clearly.

Tezkhra had told them everything, so long ago. How he had lied to them. What his true purpose here was. How he was just the same as them in the end – mortal, imperfect. That was what friends did, wasn't it? They didn't keep secrets from each other, right? He had to leave some of the details out, of course – their fields of knowledge were not advanced enough to yet understand everything.

They reacted about as well as could be expected.

“ _So you're not a god after all? What a joke!”_

“ _So I suppose all that 'god and overseer of your world' crap was all to get us to go along with your stupid schemes?”_

“ _So you're just a charlatan, then? How disappointing.”_

That was but a distant memory now. How many centuries had it been? Most of them were still alive at that time.

The fih'jik had died first, of course. They aged faster than humans and shra, and as such died at a younger age. Ques Mahesto had died not long after the Third Reconstruction. He had been old even before it, when they were still a guild, and one day he finally slipped away from them. He died happily and peacefully, in his sleep.

“ _I know this sounds sappy, but...thank you, everyone. You've given the world new hope. Don't worry about me...I'm going to see my sister now.”_

Yfus Crossar was the youngest fih'jik, but that meant little in the grand scheme of things. After the Third Reconstruction, he was somewhat lost. He could not return to the Violet Sands – _He didn't live to see them restored, did he?_ – so he traveled with the fih'jik refugees and began preaching his religion. He rose to great prominence as a member of the clergy, and died content with his accomplishments.

“ _Don't cry. I lived a good life. I'm off to see the Supreme One.”_

Lani Derra held out against death the longest, even living past 50 years of age. But for all her strength and courage, this was the one foe she could not defeat in the end. She was truly larger than life, and almost terrifying giant of a woman, keeping order among the reconstructed cities and even going on her own adventures in her younger years. In death, she was just another corpse.

“ _We all gotta die sometime, right? Hey, don't cry, Tez, I'm not afraid. Don't you know I'm never afraid of anything?”_

Tezkhra never really discovered what happened to Fero Flael – and now, he realized, he never would. According to Yacatec, he had decided to flee civilization and return to the wilds of Berylbrine. They had no contact since. Tezkhra imagined he lived a happy life too. He always seemed troubled by the confines of the large cities, only truly alive when hunting in the wilds.

If only the happy precedent set by the fih'jik could have been maintained for the rest of them.

Sicious Qualstio was cut down in his middle age. Always too reckless, that one. An experiment went wrong, and he paid the price. The healers tried to save him, but even latent energy has its limits. _I could have saved him. The accident did not kill him outright. If I had the technology of the society I left behind, I could have saved him._ But there is no use in waffling over what-ifs and maybes. He died in agony the next day regardless.

“ _Sorry...I was careless... Dehl...take care of Tehgonan for me, will you?”_

Dehl was hit hard by Sicious' death, but Tehgonan Clappain was even more profoundly affected. A grown man by then, but everyone knew that Sicious had been like a second father to him. His happy-go-lucky attitude vanished almost overnight, and he abandoned the research and experiments that may have led him to a similar fate. He resigned himself to teaching at the new university at Fortifel, but it was always clear that he did not consider it a fulfilling life. He never found that fulfillment, but he did not die alone.

“ _You...came to see me? Hah...I'm sorry about what I said, before. You're a good guy, Tez.”_

The man who called himself Sirush had some trouble fitting into the new world, at first. His talents revolved around destruction, not creation. His mind was too fractured to ever fully recover, but he was able to reintegrate himself into society before too long. However, old habits die hard, and he got wrapped up in another job, in over his head. Tezkhra wasn't clear on the details, but something went wrong, and he was mortally wounded.

Sometimes Tezkhra wondered if he hadn't simply lost the will to live.

Halia Falitza was strong of mind, but never of body. She became a prominent figure in New Fortifel and, indeed, the world for her spectacular breakthroughs in magical and technological theory. In her older years, however, she was struck with an epidemic disease that had spread like wildfire throughout Fortifel. She died before the healers could finally isolate a cure. _She should never have died. No mind should ever have to suffer for the state of the body._ But that was the way of the world, and there was no way to change it.

“Kidra Silvery” had a happy ending, though. The law and order to which she claimed allegiance had been destroyed in the wake of the cataclysm, but she brought it back. While Lani was a direct enforcer, Kidra showed a surprising aptitude for bureaucracy. She eventually rose to prominence as the governor of New Wadassia. In the end, she died content with her accomplishments.

“ _Everyone...you all came...to see me? And here I thought...you didn't care about little old me...”_

After the Third Reconstruction, Santes and Zargos D'Rath were content to live peaceful, quiet lives. Some would relish fame, some would refuse to be sated and grasp for even more, but not them. They were content to humbly serve the new world that they had helped build. In the end, they died on the same day. An oddly romantic turn of events, but somehow the whims of chance aligned to make it so.

Tezkhra envied them. They never had to experience what it was like to live without the other.

No one knew what happened to Moke. He wandered the world, but he was always within reach if need be. One day, however, he simply vanished without a trace. Most of their friends had died by then – perhaps he didn't want to put up with the stress and simply cut all ties. As he was over a century older than Dehl, however, he had probably already died through one way or another by now, Tezkhra reflected.

Rehm Sikohlon – _and Tezkhra always flinched when he heard the name, because it reminded him of another friend he had lost_ – was the most recent departure. “Recent” being relative here, of course, for it was over two centuries ago. It was always said that the shra body possesses awe-inspiring regenerative capabilities, that it can withstand any punishment, but as it turned out, that was not entirely true. Rehm and the Nalians had heaped too much abuse on his body – and the alcohol. Rehm had weaned himself off it after the Third Reconstruction, but the damage had already been done. Every time Tezkhra looked at him, he knew he would not life a full life, and that prophecy came true. When the report came that Rehm had been hospitalized and was experiencing multiple organ failure, Tezkhra knew Dehl must have been devastated. Despite their wildly different personalities, Dehl had always seen Rehm as a kindred spirit.

“ _I always...pushed it aside, y'know? Never really...thought about it. But...it's inevitable, right? Especially for a...broken old wreck like me.”_

And now it was his turn.

“I...I don't understand.” Dehl's speech was strained. “What's the point of living in a world where even gods can die?” Irrational babbling, of course – he knew the truth, like everyone else. But that was the only way the mind could cope with death.

“I'm...sorry.” That was irrational babble, too, but Tezkhra didn't know what else to say.

Maybe he would have, once. Tezkhra knew the properties and effects of senescence, he was prepared for when his flesh started to sag, his skeleton grew brittle, and his joints blew out. But the thing is, they didn't happen all at once. They crept up on him like a slowly-encroaching chill, and even after he realized it, he had to live inside that broken and brittle shell for years and years.

But what he wasn't prepared for was the deterioration of the mind. Even within a mortal lifespan, his memories failed him. Those beyond that were hopelessly lost. He vaguely remembered names, impressions, a world of cold logic and sterile steel traveling through the void, but any details were lost to him now.

“Did you know...” Tezkhra suddenly whispered hoarsely, to fill the silence. “...I can't remember anything before I came to this world. Nothing definite, anyway. The world I came from was...cold? I don't remember any emotions or feelings for a long time. There was...light. Something related to light. Somehow, that was important. And my...friends...I can't remember them anymore. An occasional name, maybe, but devoid of context. Nothing attached to it.

“But what I learned here...your names and faces...I still remember them, even now. Somehow...the memories I gained here feel more...real. Isn't that strange?”

Dehl said nothing, and simply stared in silence.

What Tezkhra doesn't tell him is that he can't remember a whole lot else, besides their names and faces and bits of their life stories. Even a century ago, he could no longer study and experiment, the things that gave his life purpose. Nothing he read stuck in his mind, and even simple problems and theories became a struggle to reason through. In recent years, his mind became an enemy, showing him visions and sounds that weren't even there.

He hated it, he realized. His body was but a worthless shell, merely physical, but his mind contained his true worth. If he lost that, he was nothing, just an animal slowly waiting to die.

“Are you afraid?” Dehl asks suddenly.

Tezkhra wished he had asked anything but that.

“You know...your religions say that there is an afterlife, where we can be with our loved ones for all eternity. But...there's no evidence for it. I can't...believe in it. So...I don't know. I don't know what will happen to me.” He swallows. “That means...yes, I suppose I am afraid. We are always afraid of what we don't know, what we can't understand.

“But...I can see why...you believe otherwise. It's...comforting. I want to hope. I want to...believe that everyone's waiting for me, and that I can be happy forever...but...”

Then again...there was something. Something buried deep in his memory. There was...a creature? A person? It died, but not truly. Somehow, it came back. True immortality. Was everyone like that? Or was it just an outlier, a fluke? Or, more likely, it was just an illusion conjured up by his decaying brain. Nonetheless, it was a comforting thought to cling to, so he did.

“...maybe. To be honest, I'm not sure if I care what happens. I'm just so...so _tired_. Tired of being a prisoner in my own body, watching as death slowly creeps through my flesh. When I made my choice to stay, I...I was prepared to die. I just wasn't prepared to grow old.” He barked a weak laugh, barely audible or recognizable. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing to say. “So even if there's nothing beyond...I think that would be alright. It means I can finally be at peace.”

There was a short silence, and then Dehl said simply, “I understand.” And he did, Tezkhra knew. Perhaps he knew better than Tezkhra himself. “It is _life_ that is a curse. Living on while others die. There is no pain in the world greater than that.”

 _And I'm sorry I'm going to inflict that pain on you again._ Tezkhra felt his eyes begin to droop. He did not have much time left, he knew, but there was one thing he still wanted to know.

“What...do the people say...about me?” Tezkhra rasped. “Have I...done well? I did good things, didn't I?”

“Yes,” Dehl answers immediately. “They say...you are a good man. You will be remembered as a true hero, one who has sacrificed much for the happiness of others.”

“Oh.” Tezkhra smiled. “Then I guess...I guess...” With the last of his strength, he gripped Dehl's hand.

“I guess it was worth it.”

He closed his eyes, and Dehl watched as the shallow rise and fall of his chest slowed and eventually stopped, his frail arm going limp in his grip.

And then Tezkhra was no more.


End file.
